The reason so many are there is because htey all recently got banned. Fairy / Swamp used ot be crazy packed with them. It's mostly cleaned out and a new batch is being run through.

You would need admins sitting at these spots 24/7 with ban hammer ticking. That's what happens in a F2P MMO where you can automate everything.

Personally the fact there are as mant lower level bots as there is ... i a good thing. It means they all nedeed to remake their toons. Plus this batch doesnt pick up any adena... made a decent chunk between Sea and Alligator last night leveling an alts sub

its alot of work to sit there all day and ban bots, like 3gms who work in shifts of 8 hours so 24/7 bots are being banned, multiply it with all servers and everyone of them needs to get a pay check, if its too small - they will just become corrupted and sell adena/gear or even if they will not be given these gm levels so they can just fly to some players and see if they are bots - they can still sell information, like clans in war would pay alot to know what others are doing and when

so its risky, expensive process and as i see it - pointless, bots are just good written scripts so nc needs better programmers who may come up with anti bot solutions, like ingame captcha. Or in worst case scenario- if you cannot get rid of bots then cut profits of gold sellers- sell adena in NCstore directly, game is p2w while bots and gold sellers are here anyway you would just cut out the middle man

Yes, i agree with you that if there is more GMs the odds of corruption are bigger, but if this issue have a solution, the solution will be technology, i think the problem is that the bots are always a step forward of NCsoft developers (this is so strange).
In other games this situation seems more controllable.

Yes, i agree with you that if there is more GMs the odds of corruption are bigger, but if this issue have a solution, the solution will be technology, i think the problem is that the bots are always a step forward of NCsoft developers (this is so strange).
In other games this situation seems more controllable.

bots get new updates 1-2 days after new patch, every time game changes something to make life of bot harder , after 1-2 days there is a patch that fix it and you can bot again. Bots are in all games where is profitable to grind all day and sell loot for ingame money for it be sold for cash again, even in path of exile where they wanted to avoid this by making another currency system still there are plenty of websites where you can buy these rare gems and trade for good items in game.

and bots on a field is just part of that problem, bots in CoC, bots in auction house, bots that make other clans impossible to enter instances, so there will not be simple solution, to get rid of money sellers you need to cut they'r profit or else they will find a way to bot again, it is not a joke, you think bots are made by some nerdy teens who has nothing to do in free time? nop these are rly smart and educated people who are doing good business by providing bots to in game currency farmers.

greatest problem of all is that NC is getting good amount of profit out of l2 and while making drastic changes in NC store and may game elements could make game more fair and competitive, balanced it's also risk, there is a fair chance that many rich people are playing l2 just cos they have this huge advantage and while casual players struggle with exp and drop, rich one thrive on that, and i cannot blame you, i bet it feels good to have that advantage over someone in game.
saying that its a risk, profits can increase due to game becoming more popular cos you don't rly need good advertising if game is fair and good, news will fly fast and people will come to try it out
OR
it may fail, many cash whales may just leave, they just may fail on updates cos again they are bad in localizing korean p2w games and profits may drop

im not huge fan of NC but even they are not that dumb to gamble on profit like that, they only offer gamble to players who are dumb enough to take it
if on the other hand someone who can make decisions in NC goes "**** it, lets try game great no matter the profits for some test year, if it fails we can always go back" then yea, it is possible

It's this stupid "all games have bots, so NCsoft doesn't have to do anything" mentality that allows bots to exist. What's next? America has 350 mass shootings per year so we should stop expecting police to do something about them? It's a defeatist mindset and the gamer community as a whole has become infested with people who promote cheating and in this game botting.

It is sad but true that legit players are the minority nowadays because it has become a viscous cycle. You can't compete unless you use scripts so people who wanna compete do it. In turn new people who wanna enter the competition see that you can't compete unless you use scripts so they start doing it too or quit. The top players of most servers run their own personal farming trains on the side to earn Adena because Adena has become so hard to get in the game.

This game has had a history of bad developer decisions that weren't tuned to our market base that has led to this problem. It is gonna be hard to turn around from this point. It would have been far easier to do something about it in 2006 when people first seriously complained about bots. NCsoft did nothing back then and it ultimately led to the game losing more than 70% of the legit subscribers in the west.

Juji has shown interest in getting rid of bots and now that he is producer there might even be a chance to do something. But at this point in the game development it is late and it will not be easy. The community of this game is full of people who are used to being able to bot and taking that away from them will cause an outcry and a lot of quitting.

I'm not sure NCsoft can survive another wave of quitters like in 2007 this time given the fact that many of the top cheaters are also the top L2Store users.

Ultimately it is like the others said. The game has cheaters in it and it has become accepted by the community of top players in this game. As long as the community doesn't change significantly there is not much NCsoft can do without losing their business. That is the reason why bots exist and not because it isn't possible to do something about them or because all games have them.

Well,I think if Admins find a bot,it's easy enough to find the owner's main char and erase it from the game,isn't it?

But so far as I see, bots pretty much occupy some locations without being stopped.Like timiel in magmeld,anytime I go there there is no place,not one cocoon that isn't being controlled by a bot or even two bots.I've seen full party of bots in Genesis garden.Forget about low lvl locations such as sea of spores,which is as well pretty much occupied by them.Now we're talking about 85+ hunting zones.What is next? Bots kill epics?

Even when this game was at its peak there where bots GM's ban them and they just open new accounts and recreate them its never ending, even if you ban their IP they just spoof new ones bots are in every major MMO that I have seen, I on a positive note I have noticed the heard thinning some what but it is frustrating when your trying to do a quest or just level for that matter and bots keep clearing the field, I would just say that everyone needs to do there do diligence and keep reporting the little buggers as they see them. I don't know what else can be done. just my 2 cents

What gm's have you ever seen one?? They have like 4-5 that work on all there games. Let me know when you see one in game and I'll check outside and see if the pigs are flying. And call my friend in hell and see if it is frozen over...

What gm's have you ever seen one?? They have like 4-5 that work on all there games. Let me know when you see one in game and I'll check outside and see if the pigs are flying. And call my friend in hell and see if it is frozen over...

TBH I haven't been back long enough to honestly answer that but lol funny stuff dude